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Definition of Black Hat SEO

I recently had an old client that called me in a bit of a panic over a significant loss of rankings due to penguin. The internet marketing company she had hired, is actually a very large player in the industry, but because I'm not out to slander anyone, I won't name names.

They engaged in some "link building" that resulted in the vast majority of the website's anchor text being keyword-rich, exact match anchor text from such gems as www.link-add.net. They also placed a couple dozen incredibly keyword-rich articles on the site that were clearly not meant for human consumption, and were only accessible through a footer link that's only located on the homepage.

The client forwarded me a response from them saying, (quoting verbatim). "We have never engaged in any black hat SEO techniques, nor will we ever engage in any black hat SEO techniques. Just that notion is ridiculous"

So clearly, the strategy I outlined above, in the mind of this company, is not black-hat SEO. So getting to my point: if that's not black hat, then what is?

I'm posing this question largely because I'm appalled that a large internet marketing company seems to be suggesting that the aforementioned techniques represent good, sound SEO, and I'd like to get an idea as to what people in our industry actually feel are good, acceptable practices. Where is the line? Can we not set higher standards for ourselves?

4 Responses

For me, Davinia hits the perfect resource for determining what is appropriate or inappropriate.

But, I think then you have to ask the question of intent. So, a small family business that is short on resources picks the junior son to do SEO because he knows more about computers. He buys some links, etc. Was he engaging in "black hat SEO?" I think not.

As to a large SEO firm doing the same... Well my opinion is different. So ask the question to the SEO firm this way: How long have you been doing SEO? Have you had a professional on our account or is the person you have new to the industry? If I wanted to buy some links or establish a link wheel, etc. will you help me with that?

If they answer all of those questions as they should if they are proclaiming light derby status (got tired of the black hat), and they did what you say, you then ask this question: So, there are (your examples here) on the site. Given that, was it because you really do not know SEO or is it that you lied about doing things outside of GWT guidelines?

At that point, you have at least made them look in the mirror.

Unfortunately, we spend too much time on good guys vs bad guys. (Yes, I am guilty of it). I think this is driven from two areas: First, many of us look for the easy answer in our endeavors before we look for the best answer. The easy answer in SEO is, frankly, often manipulation of the tools, etc. The other area that drives this back and forth is that we all are stakeholders in various sites. All of a sudden we realize someone is ahead of us for the keyword we love and we are incredulous; we then look to find out how they cheated to get there. Again, I am guilty too.

I think there is a lot of grey areas when looking at black hat vs. white hat techniques. But at the end of the day if what you are doing is against Google guidelines and there is a risk that what you are doing can negatively affect your clients rankings then you shouldn't be doing it...

techniques that are risky and not disclosed to stakeholders (e.g. paid links that your client/boss doesn't know about)

techniques that are not consistent with search engines' guidelines (e.g. spammy linkbuilding)

I don't like the fourth definition, personally, because there's nothing morally wrong about trying to game the algo. I'm not ethically obligated to play by Google's rules. Their guidelines are intended to boost their business, nothing more, nothing less.

Now, whether or not a particular technique is effective is a completely different question. Some unethical and/or spammy techniques still produce results. The search engines seem to be getting better and better at punishing sites that don't follow their guidelines, so adhering to those guidelines is probably the best long-term strategy. But hey, if you're just going for fly-by-night profits, it could be very effective to exploit the stuff that still works.

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